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Answer by Randy Newsom, Former minor league pitcher for Red Sox, Indians and Pirates systems

Branch Rickey first coined the term "Five Tool" Player (The five tools are hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills/speed, throwing, and fielding) in his book "The American Diamond." At the time, Rickey could name only two true "Five Tool" players - Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, both center fielders at the time.

Fast-forward nearly 50 years and it seems that we hear the term "Five Tool" player thrown around a lot more than Rickey would have used it. That said, baseball has started recruiting and attracting better athletes over the last 10-15 years. In fact, a player's athleticism is now seen as a key indicator to the ability to make adjustments, get better over time, and even be a consistent performer. The reason I mention this is because to be a "Five Tool" player, you really have to be a legitimate all-around athlete.

Thus, using Rickey's original description and applying it to the stats in today's decidedly different game, I've come up with a very rough baseline for what I think a Five Tool player looks like in today's game. Last season, 302 players had 250 PA's or more in the Major Leagues. This is what I am going to use when considering the subset for percentage purposes.

First tool, average, top 15 percent in the league. I could go into it significant detail, but I think average is entirely antiquated so we're going to change this to OBP. Not weighted OBP, just simple OBP. This means based off the last three years final totals, the top 15 percent barrier in OBP (thus player No. 45 in OBP given 250 PA's) was a pretty consistent .365 (.365, .361, .370).

This season, the line through the All-Star Break is only .356 (but I anticipate that will trend up in the second half as some younger pitchers get called up). For reference Mays career OBP was .382 (career average .302), Mantle .421 (average .298). Ironically, even though both players AVG dropped later in their career, their command of the strike zone got better, seeing much less of a drop off in OBP later in their careers than would be expected. So for a player to qualify as having the first tool, their OBP must be .365 or above.

Second tool, power, top 15 percent in the league in HR's. The long ball is still the metric here, you can show the value of 2B's etc. with some complicated metrics, but HR's still do the trick pretty well. If you can hit the ball over the fence, you add significant value. The 15 percent barrier over the past three seasons was surprisingly consistent as well at 24 HR's. This season at the All-Star break, the midpoint would be 14 HR's (which makes sense given the ASG took place at nearly the 100 game mark). Thus, you have to hit 24 HR's or be on pace this season to get to 24 HR's to meet the Power criteria.

Third tool, speed, top 15 percent in the league. As will be the case with defense, speed/baserunning can be tough to reliably quantify (although the statistics are getting better in these areas), especially with smaller sample sizes. That said, we will go old-school Rickey style and measure using stolen bases as the barometer. The 15 percent midpoint in SB's over the past 3 seasons is 20, 20, 17. This season at the AS break, the No. 45 guy has 9 SB's. Thus, to capture the SB key, a player must have 18 SB's or at least 10 SB's this year.

Fourth and fifth, arm/defense, is incredibly tough to statistically assess separately. I think that the simple defensive WAR (Wins Above Replacement) statistic is actually decent. Thus, I am going to conflate the two and say that to be a true five tool talent you have to be in the top 10 of your position in defensive WAR for the season. I realize this isn't perfect, but plenty of players have huge arms but never throw out anyone. Just as much, guys like Votto and Golschmidt who play 1B but don't need to throw almost ever, can still have significant defensive value. Thus, top 10 at your position of DWAR is going to be my metric that I start with.

When you start running down the criteria, the list of players over the last two years that have hit all 4 major criterion is short, but not limited to only two like Rickey's did.

First, Mike Trout obviously leads the list. However, a few other obvious and non-obvious players stand out. Carlos Gonzalez of the Rockies is offensive beast and has a great arm, but due to some errors barely qualified on the defensive metric plus he plays LF. At the same time, Jason Kipnis of the Cleveland Indians just barely qualifies on the defensive metric and is barely on pace to hit the power metric this year, but he is also on the list.

From a pure scouting "Tools" perspective, Paul Goldschmidt should never make this list, but given our metrics - his outstanding baserunning and sure-handed glove work qualifies him despite playing 1B. Now, I realize one of the knocks on a guy like Goldschmidt is that he isn't athletic enough to play CF or SS so is he really a true "Five Tool" player? My thought is yes, because what he does, he does well. But I'm sure plenty of old school scouts would debate my logic and prefer a more classic "Five Tool" guy like Andrew McCutchen who is incredibly exciting and clearly has the full package.

Despite getting a little older, David Wright of the Mets also has "Five Tool" qualifications. Finally, the guys who I think are the biggest lightning rod in this debate: Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Yasiel Puig don't qualify given the above. Machado doesn't walk enough for the OBP and while his HR's are down, those doubles would let me subjectively qualify him in that category - but the OBP is a problem.

Likewise with Harper, the speed and OBP has never come together at the same time to qualify him just objectively. That said, subjectively, I'm qualifying both Harper and Machado, with a vision towards the future on both. Puig, I've documented before on this site, needs more time to prove he's truly going to have the long term OBP and defensive chops (although the arm is special) to make this list. But Puig also subjectively shows the Five Tool capacity and so I'm including him as well.

Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Yasiel Puig, David Wright, Jason Kipnis, Carlos Gonzalez, Paul Goldschmidt, and despite the Biogenesis issues, Ryan Braun all seem like legitimate Five Tool players given the qualifications above mixed with my own subjective judgment. That said, from an old school scouting perspective, I believe that most scouts would actually only give that title to Trout, McCutchen, and Harper. Arguments can be made for others as well, but I think this discussion will be completely revisited when Byron Buxton debuts in Minnesota sometime next year (hopefully).

In the end though, if we could have shown 1965 Branch Rickey the amount of players that possess a combination of nearly all Five Tools, I think he would have been surprised and excited. It's an exciting time to be a baseball fan as we're seeing unprecedented athleticism in the game.